| MSI N560GTX Ti Hawk Video Card |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Video Cards | |
| Written by Steven Iglesias-Hearst | |
| Wednesday, 18 May 2011 | |
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MSI N560GTX Ti Hawk Video Card
Manufacturer: MicroStar International Full Disclosure: The product sample used in this article has been provided by MSI. NVIDIA have completely blown away their previous generation GPU's with the introduction of the GTX 5xx line up and while they are 'good enough' at stock speeds, it's normal for AIB partners to push these GPU's to their limits. MSI have tweaked the GeForce GTX 560Ti to 950MHz GPU / 1050MHz Memory, given it the 'Hawk' moniker, slapped on a Twin Frozr III cooler and sent it out into the wild to show the world what it is made of. Price wise the MSI N560GTX-Ti Hawk will obviously set you back more than a reference GTX 560Ti but in return it delivers stellar performance and excellent cooling capability. The MSI N560GTX-Ti Hawk has the standard 1GB memory with a 256-bit wide memory interface giving it 134.4GB/s memory bandwidth. The 40nm manufacturing process of the GF114 GPU allows NVIDIA's foundry's to cut 1.95 billion (1,950,000,000) transistors into the GPU core, a crazy feat of modern engineering. The Hawk also supports 'Triple Over Voltage' out of the box with the right version of MSI Afterburner (2.2.0 Beta 2). Benchmark Reviews aims to provide you with an unbiased review of the MSI N560GTX-Ti Hawk and report back our findings, keeping you informed on the latest technologies available on the market today.
For this review we have a wide range of video card comparisons in our usual mixture of DX10 / DX11 synthetic benchmarks and current games to get a good idea where it fits in performance and price wise. We also intend to overclock the GPU to its limits and see if the Twin Frozr III cooler with its improved fan design has what it takes to cool the GPU and other components effectively, so without further delay let's move on and get stuck in.
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Comments
* Not to mention a fine effort again from you guys:)
1)They are nickel plated copper heatpipes.
2)I have not actually reviewed a video card with the twin frozr II, but if you look at Bruce Norman's review of the MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II here at BmR #benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=689&Itemid=72&limit=1&limitstart=1 you will see they are essentially the same cooler with a different shroud and different fans (as I described in my final thoughts). The extra $$ is not necessarily just for the cooler but the different features the Hawk card has over the Twin Frozr II card.
Hope this helps.
Hope this helps.
MSI's bizarre marketing aside, the cooler seems to be the best custom air cooler on the market right now.
I've got a pretty hard to answer question!! I'm totally confused to buy this card (MSI N560 GTX Ti hawk)or ATI HD 6950 2GB reference version and flash it to HD 6970 2GB which is quit stronger than this card.But I don't know anything about the risks of this flashing process and consequences. The price of this card (MSI) is about 30$ cheaper than 2GB version of 6950 in our country. But XFX version of 6950 2gb has the same price as the MSI card has.What do you say Steven? (power consumption of this card is higher than HD 6950)
Thank you very much.
Buying a reference 6950 to flash to a 6970 is a risky choice. First you must find a compatible BIOS and then of course you have to flash it.
If the flash goes wrong or you use an incompatible BIOS you will only see a blank screen next time you boot, some 6950's have dual BIOS switch to overcome this issue but some don't. If the flash does not work out you will have to install another card in slot one and the failed flash card in slot 2 and use the -i function of atiflash to detect the correct GPU to and reflash the BIOS to the correct card.
For example where the failed GPU is in slot 2 the command "atiflash -i" would list any installed GPU's starting with 0 upwards, the second card would typically be 1. The command to reflash that would be "atiflash -r -f 1 biosname.bin"
While the GTX560Ti HAWK has higher power consumption, my testing shows that it is better than the 6950 2gb at the tested resolutions in most tests.
If you do manage to flash a HD6950 to a HD6970 you would see a big rise in power consumption and heat production but obviously you would get much better FPS.
What are your thoughts?
The one 6950 I've played with that would flash to 6970 would always crash under heavy load, probably because it only had a single 6-pin power connector, rather than the dual 6-pin power connectors a "real" 6970 has.
Bottom line: if you can flash your 6950 to a 6970 and it runs well, great, but don't buy any 6950 expecting to be able to do this.
no i see it have only 18 Amps available per lane (12x18=216w)
you think is possible to use it or ill better start looking for a single lane ( CM Silent Pro M850)
thanks in advance for reply